Learn from Akikazu Nakamura, a master of the shakuhachi method pioneered long ago by traveling Zen monks. Participants will be introduced to missoku, the Japanese breathing technique once practiced by these monks in music and meditation. Nakamura, who trained with shakuhachi master Katsuya Yokoyama, will follow the missoku workshop with a master class for shakuhachi players.

TICKETSMissoku Workshop only:$15 / $10 Japan Society members

(notice the cost!)

I studied with Akikazu for six months in Tokyo and highly recommend attending. This workshop is a must for anyone interested in how one master approaches blowing the shakuhachi.

From the website:Long believed lost, Kinugasa’s Kurutta Ippeiji (A Page of Madness) (1926) is a masterpiece of Japanese silent cinema and truly unlike any other film ever made, using a breathtaking array of avant-garde, expressionist, and surrealist filmmaking techniques to evoke the madness of patients in a mental hospital—their nightmares and hallucinations, but also an inner life of serenity and beauty. The centerpiece of this year’s festival is the world premiere of an original score performed live by the Ensemble N_JP (Japan/United States), under the direction of the award-winning composer and bass clarinetist Gene Coleman and featuring the master shakuhachi player and composer Akikazu Nakamura; the koto player Toshiko Kuto; the cellist Alex Waterman; the contra bassist Evan Lipson; and the conductor Rei Hotoda, an assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony. Commissioned by the International House Philadelphia, where it will be presented the night before the MoMA performance, and supported by the Japan Foundation, the score also features benshi-style narration (spoken text in Japanese and English). The film’s scenario was co-written by Yasunari Kawabata, the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Izu Dancer and Snow Country.